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The A to Z of broadband

Let's get connected with an alphabetic guide to all things broadband

Written by Gemma Simpson, Contributor Nov. 1, 2006 at 7:50 a.m. PT

Let's get connected with an alphabetic guide to all things broadband

Gone are the days of waiting ages for a web page to load, or cursing as big images slow down the internet connection to a crawl. Broadband is now in our homes, workplaces and schools - indispensable for making long-distance Skype calls, watching YouTube clips or downloading music.

The list from A to Z

Click on the links below to find out more...

A is for ADSL
B is for BT
C is for Cable & Wireless
D is for Dial-up
E is for Education
F is for Fibre
G is for Goonhilly
H is for HSDPA
I is for In-flight
J is for Janet
K is for Kingston
L is for Landlines
M is for Murdoch
N is for Next generation
O is for Ofcom
P is for Power lines
Q is for Quad-play
R is for Remote working
S is for Satellite phones
T is for Trains
U is for Unbundling
V is for VoIP
W is for WiMax
X is for Xbox
Y is for YouTube
Z is for Zombies

Broadband means big business - the proportion of UK households with fat pipes is likely to double in the next three years as dial-up is consigned to the history books. Which means big changes to the way we use the internet at home and in business.

Once a premium product, some operators are even giving broadband away these days, and faster broadband services and wireless technologies are already making their presence felt too.

Click on the letters in the A to Z list to find out more about the technology that has revolutionised internet access - from ADSL to zombies.

ADSL

Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) technology has all but swept away the old dial-up internet access. Back in the day you'd be lucky to get 56Kbps out of a dial-up modem whereas now broadband services are being advertised at up to 24Mbps.

It still uses the existing copper phone lines but unlike older technologies such as ISDN you can still use the landline when the broadband is on (although the chances are that you'll be using VoIP anyway). Because it's an asymmetric service - meaning it uses two separate frequency bands which can run at the same time - more data can be downloaded than uploaded, which makes it well-suited for web surfing.

ADSL is offered by roughly 200 different ISPs in the UK, with all manner of extra options for consumers to choose from.

For businesses it not only facilitates access to corporate applications when staff work from home but also provides the opportunity for more innovative business models - such as virtual call centres, where the agents work from home rather than in one office.

ADSL isn't the only type of DSL around, though it's by far the most common.

Other types include SDSL (symmetrical DSL), HDSL (high data rate DSL), VDSL (very-high-bit-rate DSL), and even PDSL (powerline DSL).

It's not surprising BT is the biggest supplier of broadband in the UK - after all it owns most of the cables in the ground through which broadband is delivered to the masses.

It has 8.7 million broadband customers, including the customers of other ISPs that use the BT network, although it didn't do too brilliantly in a recent customer satisfaction survey.

The BT Group is made up of five different units: Exact, Global Services, Openreach, Retail and Wholesale.

BT Retail is the customer-facing division of the telco, serving both business and residential customers, and is the prime channel to market for other BT businesses.

BT Wholesale deals with the other communication companies - such as Cable & Wireless - and runs BT's own networks. Openreach, the youngest of the BT family, owns, maintains and develops the access network that links homes and businesses to the networks of the UK's communication providers.

Broadband isn't just for web surfing as far as BT is concerned. In fact, broadband is at the heart of a number of the telco's biggest growth plans.

It's got an IPTV service BT Vision in the works, where you can watch films or TV programmes on demand using the broadband connection.

It has also launched an engineer home-visit service to get its customers up to speed on the net.

Another new venture is BT's Fusion project, which launched in 2005, and enables customers to make mobile calls and fixed line calls, routed through a BT-provided and branded router and over a broadband connection. BT is hoping a move into business with Corporate Fusion will boost the so-far unimpressive take-up.

And even though it already has a big chunk of the market this doesn't mean it isn't looking to grow some more - recently rumours of a potential bid for Tiscali surfaced.

Cable & Wireless

A competitor and critic of BT, Cable & Wireless is often regarded as the UK's 'second telco'.

C&W isn't the leading player when it comes to broadband either. In June this year, after a host of customer service complaints, Cable & Wireless announced its consumer ISP Bulldog would stop chasing new customers and instead focus on selling wholesale broadband services to other ISPs.

C&W is now focusing on its own fixed-mobile converged (FMC) service, taking on BT's Fusion in a bid to get users making both mobile and landline calls from a single phone.

The hostility between C&W and BT is clear: in an interview with silicon.com C&W's CEO Jim Marsh criticised BT's 21CN launch for not considering its customers.

Dial-up

Dial-up access, the old connectivity chestnut, uses a modem connection and telephone line to dial into an ISP's node to establish a modem-to-modem link, usually to the internet.

Until recently dial-up was the favoured and cheapest method of access but it is now predicted to become a technology dinosaur compared to broadband by 2010 when it is predicted to make up only 0.5 per cent of internet connections.

silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane picked up on the move away from dial-up back in 2005, in this column, when he noted that the need to dial in to an ISP suddenly "seems in the distant past".

Education

Classrooms are getting connected across the country, with broadband being used as a teaching tool.

Gone are the days of dedicated IT suites - PCs and PDAs are becoming an integral part of life in the classroom.

And broadband-based learning is something the Brits are doing better than European counterparts, according to a recent EU survey. A stonking 96 per cent of UK teachers have used computers as a teaching tool in the past year, and more than one-fifth have used PCs in half their lessons.

Not everyone is a fan of getting youngsters online, however. silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane recently noted the increased amount of malware and delays when school's out for the summer.

But the trend is for increased connectivity for schools and their pupils - a high speed WAN linking schools across Hertfordshire was recently set up to allow kids to use the internet as a learning tool at home and in class.

Fibre

Forget the Bran Flakes - its optical fibre that's the big idea when it comes to transmitting data.

Optical fibres are tiny transparent fibres made of plastic or glass which carry light signals. Currently when you log in from home you'll be connecting to conventional copper wires, installed to carry analogue voice calls.

But copper is heavier than plastic and requires thousands of electrical links to get your message across the globe.

Optical fibres hold many advantages over their conventional copper counterparts: they can work at higher bandwidths and span longer distances. Fibres also have exceptionally low signal loss and the ability to carry more data.

Columnist Peter Cochrane is a fan of fibres but switching all of the existing copper network to fibre would be an expensive business.

As the world embraces wireless it might not be long until optical fibres join copper wires in the great-technology-graveyard in the sky.

Goonhilly

The Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station holds 61 dishes and is the largest telecommunications site in the world, located on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall.

The visitor centre features what BT considers to be the world's fastest broadband internet café with the computers able to download data at speeds of up to 100Mbps, around 50 times faster than a typical broadband installation at home.

Sadly, it's now goodbye Goonhilly as the satellite service is to be shifted to BT's other station in Madley, Herefordshire, in the next two years. Take a peek at the doomed dishes in the Goonhilly photo story.

HSDPA

HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) is the wireless standard that gives mobile users broadband speeds on the move.

Otherwise known as 3.5G, HSDPA allows faster speeds for mobile internet access (theoretically up to 1.8Mbps), compatibility with GSM and increased voice call capacity for operators.

O2 was the first UK network operator to officially take up HSDPA in 2005. Earlier this year, Dell decided to offer embedded HSPDA modems in its laptops.

But the so-called 'mobile broadband' has not taken off in the same way as its fixed-line counterpart, maybe because of restrictive and expensive service plans.

However, 3 announced its rollout of an HSDPA network earlier this year with O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone already committed to rollouts of 3.5G.

In-flight

The development of in-flight broadband is fast gaining momentum, and according to a poll of silicon.com readers it can't come soon enough.

Whether broadband in the sky will ever actually take off, however, is an unanswered question. Boeing's six-year project, offering airline passenger access to the internet, called Connexion had its wings clipped in August 2006.

Despite the setback, former Connexion customer airlines, including Japan airlines and Lufthansa, are continuing to offer in-flight broadband services. But both airlines remain uncertain as to how long in-flight broadband will remain available.

A host of airlines are planning to offer in-flight broadband, with BMI trials of broadband services and in-flight mobile underway and Air France committing to a rollout of in-flight mobile connectivity.

Back in June, US company Aircell announced its plans to use a newly acquired radio spectrum licence to offer "affordable" broadband service aboard commercial airplanes. Aircell already sells satellite-based voice and data services to the general aviation sector, primarily corporate jets, and carrier Frontier Airlines is showing interest in a wi-fi network for its next phase of in-flight entertainment.

On a separate note, airline passengers are not so enamoured of the idea of in-flight mobile calls - a recent silicon.com reader poll reacted negatively to the notion, with 75 per cent saying mobiles on planes would be incredibly annoying.

Despite such strength of feeling, the movement to make mile-high mobiles a reality is gathering pace - Ryanair is planning to allow mobile access on all its flights by mid-2007, and Australia's national carrier Qantas has announced its own in-flight mobility incentive.

Janet

Janet (Joint academic network) is another bright technology idea of the UK government to connect all higher and further education institutions.

But this is one IT government project with a good track record. Development started in the 1970s and the Janet network now connects more than 18 million end-users in the UK's education and research organisations to each other, as well as to the rest of the world, through utilising high-speed IP networks.

Janet has been developed under many guises. In the late 1980s, SuperJanet was born: a fibre optic high-speed IP sibling to rehost Janet, proposed to address speed concerns.

Like a Marvel movie-hero franchise, SuperJanet has had many sequels, each faster and larger than its predecessor. The current version, SuperJanet 4, runs at 10Gbps with SuperJanet 5, predicted to come into operation at the end of 2006.

The UKerna (United Kingdom Education and Research Networking Association) organisation, which manages the network, recently signed a deal for automated back-up, archiving, hosting and web file services with vendor InTechnology.

Kingston

Kingston Communications is small fry in the big business world of telcos. But it has been in telecoms since 1904, fighting off potential buyers and acquiring other businesses, including Omnetica for £169m in 2004.

Kingston now serves 185,000 residents in the East Yorkshire area with broadband internet and telephony technology.

It offers internet and telephony services to both the business and consumer market. In the office, Kingston boasts broadband from £17.00 per month, plus hosted services and security systems. At home, Kingston offers four internet options consisting of two broadband, one dial-up and one wireless package.

This tiny telco is growing up fast with 139,000 broadband subscribers at the end of Q3 2006 and Carphone Warehouse signing a three-year £3m contract with Affiniti, which is part of Kingston, to build three IP centres.

Landlines

Most free broadband websites are bundled with a landline, which might seem a bit like selling a chocolate teapot with your PG Tips considering the rise of fat-pipe-fuelled VoIP has led to many traditional telephone receivers languishing in their cradles.

Carphone Warehouse's TalkTalk service threw down the gauntlet of 'free broadband forever' in the UK, which included free landline calls locally, nationally and to 28 foreign countries for an extra £11 line rental, on top of the £9.99 per month fee.

Other suitors quickly joined the 'free' broadband brigade with Orange, or the artist formerly known as Wanadoo, leaping in to offer existing customers who spend more than £30 on their mobile bill free broadband, and then BSkyB spending £250m to offer 'free' 2MB broadband with any Sky TV package.

With three companies now offering 'free' broadband, price comparison website uSwitch.com launched a comparison service to help users choose between Orange, Sky and TalkTalk.

Vodafone broke the broadband mould in September, by shunning unbundling and moving into fixed line broadband. Vodafone will now have to work hard to remain competitive against the 'free' broadband upstarts, as its service is limited by standard BT line speeds of up to 8Mbps.

Murdoch

The name Murdoch is synonymous with News Corp, one of the world's largest media conglomerates. But both Rupert and son James Murdoch have been turning their attention to the internet of late.

James Murdoch, CEO of BSkyB, has turned Sky from 'the pay TV provider' to 'the telecoms provider' with ventures into mobile TV and P2P movie downloads.

James Murdoch has presided over the launch of Sky into the competitive broadband market, giving free access to TV subscribers. James Murdoch announced in July 2006 BSkyB will be selling broadband services to its eight million Sky TV subscribers on one of three packages. The threesome will cost between nothing and £16 per month, dependent on speed and download limit.

Last year Sky purchased Easynet for £211m, choosing the ISP for its efforts in local loop unbundling and its strong broadband network.

Rupert Murdoch has been accused of failing to 'get' the net - a charge he even admitted. After forking out $580m last year to buy the social networking site MySpace it seems Murdoch senior is making up for lost time.

Next generation

The nationwide 21st Century Network (21CN) project is BT's plan to switch its copper circuit-switched networks with a single IP-based core infrastructure, with a price-tag of £10bn over five years.

Announced in June 2004, the most radical shake-up of BT's national network in the 25 years since the first digital switches were introduced will see all calls on BT metro and core networks transformed into voice over IP.

Competition has spawned 21CN, as prices continue to fall in every element of telecoms activity but costs don't, with the UK's PSTN being costly to maintain.

In 2005, BT named its buddies for the £10bn project, including Alcatel, Ericsson and Siemens, and raised a few eyebrows with the exclusion of Marconi.

The pilot scheme kicks off in Cardiff at the end of this year, with national implementation planned to start in January 2008.

On a separate and non-BT note there's also the next generation of the internet - which has the catchy name internet protocol version 6 (IPv6). This was born as a result of the previous incarnation - IPv4 - running out of addresses, with the boom in mobile users accessing the net via their handsets contributing heavily to the problem.

IPv4 holds more than four billion addresses and when it was introduced, in 1973, less than 1,000 computers were connected to the network. Nowadays, four billion is inadequate to give every person on the planet an IP address.

IPv6 will hold a stonking 3.4 x 10 to the power of 38 addresses - enough for every atom on your body to hold an IP address - but only currently accounts for a tiny percentage of live addresses, with IPv4 still dominating the publicly accessible internet.

Ofcom

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) is the 'super regulator' for the UK's telecoms industry, including the broadband market.

In its watchdog role, Ofcom has been involved in a fair few skirmishes over the years.

It recently published research into how to protect UK consumers on the internet, citing industry self-regulation and proactive users as key factors.

As well as worrying about broadband to the home it's also had to watch over new types of broadband communications, such as VoIP. A new licence was also made available by the watchdog, allowing train operators to upgrade their on-board wireless services to two-way satellite links. Ofcom has had licence types for planes and ships for some time but created the new type because of the increasing use of wireless links on trains.

Power lines

Getting broadband through the electricity grid is a concept that's been slow to take off.

A trial from Southern Electric in 2003 connected homes and businesses in the Winchester area with speeds of up to 1Mbps both upstream and downstream.

But silicon.com columnist Peter Cochrane is not convinced of the tech's viability, reporting in 2003 on the 'hot potato' nature of power line broadband, with suppliers eager to start trials and then quickly dropping the concept.

Even so, by 2005 the European Commission was pushing its 25 member states to adopt supplying broadband through the electricity grid, as a way of addressing the digital divide.

Any takers?

Quad-play

Quad-play is an incentive to get the four digital areas of broadband, cable TV, landlines and mobile phones from one supplier.

Quad-play paying customers can watch TV programmes and films on demand, while downloading music and reading celebrity interviews on a mobile.

While a customer could get each digital service from a different supplier, quad-play suppliers offer the consumer all four services as a bundle, and usually at a discounted price.

The UK's first quad-play telecoms operator was created earlier this year as NTL completed its takeover of Virgin mobile.

The NTL quad package is £40 per month. Other telcos are expected follow suit soon.

Remote working

No sweaty commute, dodgy photocopiers or limp canteen food - the ability to work without having to come in to the office has clear appeal.

And new forms of technology, such as cheap broadband, voice over IP and wireless internet access, along with recent UK employment legislation, have all been helping unchain workers from their desks - and keep them in their pyjamas.

But it's not just about working from home: remote working enables various types of workers - from nurses to sales people - to use technology such as mobile and smart phones, wireless internet hotspots and VPN software to get on with work regardless of their location.

Remote working offers particular benefits to workers who spend a lot of time commuting to meetings, or those who live a long way from the office or who are usually mobile and just use the office as a base.

Satellite phones

The satellite phone is a type of mobile that communicates directly with communications satellites orbiting the Earth - which means coverage is potentially global.

Satellite comms company Inmarsat has taken its first steps towards a worldwide handheld satellite phone service, with plans to launch the service in Asia before the end of 2006.

Trains

Train operators are falling over themselves to flog on-board wi-fi to their passengers.

Wi-fi is now available on GNER's entire fleet - it is the first rail operator to offer a wi-fi service on all its trains.

The company, which operates the UK's East Coast line, installed the technology on all 41 trains ahead of schedule, with the £3.2m project originally due for completion in May of next year.

Following GNER's lead, Virgin Trains announced all its carriages will have onboard wi-fi by 2007. At the moment only the privileged first class passengers have wi-fi access on Virgin Trains.

Unbundling

Unbundling, or local loop unbundling (LLU), allows BT competitors to install their own equipment in BT's local exchanges. This means they don't have to buy wholesale telecoms services from BT and can potentially offer a wider range of services and speeds.

Following an intervention by Ofcom in 2004, which cut the cost of unbundling, many operators got involved including AOL, BSkyB and Cable & Wireless.

The number of unbundled telephone lines in the UK is nearing three-quarters of a million and, based on current growth and the rollout plans of these operators, Peter Black, the UK's telecommunications adjudicator, estimates between two and three million lines will be unbundled by the end of 2006.

The process is still experiencing problems, according to Black, who has long warned that operational problems with the delivery of LLU could make it difficult for BT's rivals to plan and launch new services.

VoIP

Routing your voice conversations over the internet or through any other IP-based network using voice over IP means you no longer have an excuse for not keeping in touch with those long-distance relatives.

As you chat on VoIP your voice is converted into data packets that are routed over the net, just like an email or any other kind of data.

Skype is a popular VoIP download that turns your PC into a phone - though it has recently been touting "PC-free" cordless phones which plug into a broadband connection and bypass the need to switch on a computer.

The big advantage of VoIP is cost: just as it costs nothing to send an email, VoIP calls are free or ridiculously cheap - even internationally.

Other bonuses of the technology include more features than your bog-standard telephone - such as setting up conference calls easily and cheaply, and the user not being tied to an area code.

VoIP looks poised to take over the telephony systems and telcos are already starting to integrate VoIP into their networks. BT recently announced plans to switch to an all-IP infrastructure by 2008, known as 21CN, perhaps the most dramatic commitment to the technology by any major telco.

The big question mark for VoIP is how to regulate it. In the US, the Federal Communications Commission exempted internet telephony services from the regulations and taxes of the standard phone system, which is partly why the calls are so cheap. Time will tell whether regulators remain so kind.

WiMax

WiMax might sound like an extreme sport but it actually means Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access.

It is long-distance wi-fi, offering access to wireless broadband networks over much greater distances (up to 30 miles) than ordinary wi-fi. This means good news all round: users can get online without worrying about the quality of the copper phone line they have and operators don't have any of the expense of getting cable out to remote towns.

There are two types of WiMax on the drawing board: broadband access, using landlines for 'last mile' connectivity, and mobile WiMax.

Intel and Sprint started working on this technology in 2005, and late last year an industry standards group approved a new specification of WiMax, which received its official certification for mobile networks.

Mobile WiMax could soon be coming to Japan with telecoms operator KDDI completing field trials earlier this year.

To view the silicon.com Cheat Sheet for WiMax click here.

Xbox

It's not just PC-based web surfing that is driving demand for broadband.

When Xbox Live launched, it threw open the international playground doors of online gaming. The subscription-based service allows players to play games with or against other Xbox Live players around the world via the net.

More than three million gamers have now spent two billion hours on the Xbox live network, playing games with friends around the world and downloading more than 50 million pieces of gaming and entertainment content from the Xbox Live marketplace.

Xbox live was relaunched in 2005, with support for the Xbox 360, and is currently available in 29 countries.

YouTube

As well as hardware, such as the Xbox, new online services are making the most of broadband.

Video-sharing website YouTube has ridden the wave of popularity - becoming the web's fastest growing site in just six months, with people logging on to watch more than 700 million videos daily. And that's not something that would happen if web users were still hobbled by dial-up connections.

But popularity does not necessarily translate into hard cash - and questions abound over the site's business prospects. Analysts have also voiced concern over copyright issues, which have plagued YouTube since its launch.

None of this deterred Google, however, which purchased YouTube for $1.65bn last month.

YouTube has inspired other businesses to jump on the online video bandwagon. Earlier in the year CNN kicked off a new section of its website where citizen journalists can submit video content.

There was much excitement and disbelief when the UK government published some public service messages on YouTube back in August.

Unfortunately, the Cabinet Office had to pull one of the videos due to copyright violation.

Zombies

No, not the living dead come to eat your brains but PCs commandeered by remote attackers to spew out spam. The rise of broadband has made this problem worse as fat pipes have led to an increase in the number of PCs left connected to the internet all day.

An army of zombies, aka a botnet, is made up of thousands of computers that have been clandestinely hijacked after being infected by malware.

Botnets are also used by cyber criminals to carry out distributed denial of service attacks.

Big is not necessarily beautiful in the botnet world - smaller zombie armies can help malicious attackers avoid detection.

Spammers are dusting off their botnet passports and targeting new countries and regions to increase the number of machines they can enlist.

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